Op/Ed

Trump's Dream Team for Economic Success

Posted
January 12, 2017 04:30 am | Op-Ed

By Kevin Hernandez

The American public has long been yearning for a
drastic change to the status quo.

Sadly,
the past eight years have brought onto us sluggish
economic growth, a wave of overregulation that
drastically hurts the viability of our small businesses
and, overall, an out-of-touch administration. It’s no
surprise that Americans are fed up, and this year’s
election proved that.

What has been needed, now more than ever, is for
someone to shake up D.C. and repair an inefficient and
inflated federal government.

With Republicans retaining the majority of both
chambers of Congress, and a Republican president in the
White House, it’s now time though to put rhetoric aside
and demonstrate that there’s truly “A
Better Way” for Washington to govern.

The burdens inflicted upon our nation’s entrepreneurs
by an administration infatuated with bigger government,
more taxation and overregulation can no longer be
dismissed. After all, it’s those same entrepreneurs who
are risking their own capital and, most importantly,
creating roughly two-thirds of all U.S. jobs.

Thankfully, President-elect Donald Trump’s business
acumen and pro-growth agenda has already translated into
the outstanding selection of three key members who will
serve on his Cabinet. It’s important to also note that
these officials will be critically important in
complementing the efforts of Speaker Paul Ryan’s Better
Way agenda, House Ways and Means Committee
Chairman Kevin Brady’s efforts on tax reform and House
Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s
efforts to roll back the Dodd-Frank Act.

Steven Mnuchin, secretary, Department of the
Treasury

With almost 20 years of experience working as an
investment banker at Goldman Sachs,Mnuchin will bring a
wealth of knowledge regarding economic and financial
issues. Mnuchin also brings a particularly keen
understanding of the importance of lending and access to
capital, which entrepreneurs and business groups alike
unequivocally prioritize as a key issue.

Working in lockstep with Hensarling and the
president-elect’s pick for the Commerce Department,
Wilbur Ross, Mnuchin will play a pivotal role in the
rolling back of Dodd-Frank, which has negatively
affected small and medium-sized business, along with our
vitally important community and regional banks
throughout the country. These banks have felt the
squeeze caused by the vastly complex web of
one-size-fits-all regulations intended for large banks,
and have thus been unable to provide the access to
capital desperately needed by entrepreneurs.

Addressing Dodd-Frank and reforming our tax code are
two of Mnuchin’s immediate priorities that will
alleviate some of the burdensome effects of
overregulation.

Wilbur Ross, secretary, Department of Commerce

At 79, Ross, a billionaire investor, never imagined
he would find himself reporting to someone. That quickly
changed when asked to serve his country as the secretary
of Commerce under President-elect Trump’s leadership,
which he humbly accepted.

Ross will be responsible for working with businesses
to promote job creation and economic growth.

His experience and success in turning around failing
firms is unparalleled, and so is his approach to
addressing these challenging investments. In a 2008
interview with NPR, Ross explained his hands-on approach
to reviving a failing steel company by saying, “we got
an enormous amount of good ideas from the blue collar
workers. That fellow who has been standing behind a
machine for 10 years, who knows it better than the
people who built it, really knows what to do.”

That very approach that Wilbur Ross has had
throughout his career and will soon bring to the
Department of Commerce is illustrative of not only the
refreshing leadership he will bring to the agency but
also of the overall theme and direction of Trump’s
wishes as incoming commander in chief.

Ross told CNBC that two of his priorities will be
trade reform and increasing U.S. exports abroad.

Small and medium-sized business stand to greatly
benefit from trade reform and an increase in exporting
as they make up 98 percent of all U.S. companies
involved in exporting.

Linda McMahon, administrator, Small Business
Administration

McMahon is the underrated Cabinet pick in my opinion.
A phenomenal addition to Trump’s team, McMahon will
without a doubt bring the necessary experience, mindset
and skills to unleash the potential of our country’s
small business community, while effectively serving as
the leading voice for small business and
entrepreneurship.

As the co-founder of World Wrestling Entertainment
Inc., McMahon certainly experienced the ups and downs of
entrepreneurship. Scaling a company of 13 employees to a
now public traded global enterprise with over 800
employees worldwide didn’t happen overnight. Rather, she
cut her teeth as one of the country’s top female CEOs by
resurrecting a once failing business from its ashes and
turning into the global brand that it is today.

Already an advocate for female entrepreneurs with
Women’s Leadership Live, an organization she co-founded,
there is no doubt Linda McMahon will ensure women, along
with minority entrepreneurs, are a top priority in the
Trump administration.

The agency she will soon be taking over has a budget
of over $10 billion and a loan portfolio of roughly $125
billion. In 2015, the SBA approved over 70,000
government-backed private-sector loans to small business
throughout the country. McMahon will without a doubt be
the champion we need on behalf of the American
entrepreneur.

Our sluggish recovery from the 2008 recession and 2.1
percent average growth between 2010 and 2015 should
serve as a lesson that big government policies and
overregulation of industries don’t work. It’s time we
listen to our small business community’s needs if we
want them to continue being the driving force of our
economic engine, and President-elect Trump has done just
that by nominating Steven Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross and Linda
McMahon.

It’s going to be a great four years for economic
growth and small businesses.

---------------

Kevin Hernandez is director of
Government Affairs and Policy at the United
States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. He is also a
fellow with the James Madison Institute, Florida’s
premier free-market think tank.
Column courtesy of Florida Politics.

This piece was reprinted by the Columbia County Observer
with permission or license.